The Navy ought to put lasers on it that play anti-Nork light shows on the clouds at night. (Maybe some giant speakers that blare Freedom Rock, too.)

If they're looking to provoke the KJ Un, then that might just do it. Sure, the B-2s and F-22s were attention getters, but parking this thing in international waters right off their coast might just get their goat.

This ought to really get some tiny dicks a'wavin'. Good jorb, Washington.

Why would they be looking to provoke him or North Korea? Think about it - when has provocation ever been necessary for us to invade a country? We've got that whole preemptive strike thing pretty well normalized now, but now, suddenly, we need to wait for NK to fire the first shot?No, something else is going on here.

Why would they be looking to provoke him or North Korea? Think about it - when has provocation ever been necessary for us to invade a country? We've got that whole preemptive strike thing pretty well normalized now, but now, suddenly, we need to wait for NK to fire the first shot?No, something else is going on here.

Shhhh. They don't suspect anything about the lasers or underwater shark pens.

Old_Chief_Scott:Theaetetus: Old_Chief_Scott: Bringing this thing into the theater is also going to give a ballistic missile watch capability.

Are our satellites and long range radar in Alaska not good enough anymore?

Those are overwatch. We still need to keep an eye one everybody else but this rig brings a great deal of- let's call it "focus" on Best Korea.

Oh, piffle. This isn't a "gosh, NK is such a huge threat that we need to bring a great deal of focus on them to watch for ballistic missile launches," this is a "we're going to park a giant honking radar installation just off your coast and blast you with enough RF to make your fillings rattle, because we can."

Or rather, except for the "because we can" part. We have an ulterior motive for this, and it certainly isn't security.

The radar in Alaska would only see a missile launched from North Korea when it is hundreds of miles high, and quite likely already half-way to it's target. A radar much closer to the DPRK can give much greater warning times and better trajectory information earlier, so you know where it's aimed.

Since we're (presumably) just waiting for something to happen and not looking for something specific, that ship probably covers a huge area against a variety of threats (ballistic, surface-to-surface, aircraft, etc.) with lower cost and greater endurance than running AWACs flights all the time. Plus it can probably do so from greater distance and is a single target, where the AWACS will have to fly right up to the border in numbers, constantly to do the same job. They're just lowering the cost and the number of opportunities they're giving any potentially trigger-happy Best Koreans, would be my guess.

mbillips:GORDON: What can a $200m radar ship do that a couple of $20m AWAC planes can't? Besides float.

You know that ship isn't going out without a carrier group for protection, is all I'm saying. The AWACS already come with the carrier group.

Sit in one place and monitor 24/7 without refueling, for one thing. It's not a ship; it's a platform that anchors to the bottom.Theaetetus: Old_Chief_Scott: Bringing this thing into the theater is also going to give a ballistic missile watch capability.

Are our satellites and long range radar in Alaska not good enough anymore?

Not good enough for early warning and rough targeting, which is what the SM-3s on an Aegis cruiser/DDG need to shoot down a Nork missile before it gets to Japan.

The Aegis BMD system is a stand alone system. This provides information to the midcourse interceptors in Alaska and California.

Why would they be looking to provoke him or North Korea? Think about it - when has provocation ever been necessary for us to invade a country? We've got that whole preemptive strike thing pretty well normalized now, but now, suddenly, we need to wait for NK to fire the first shot?No, something else is going on here.

after North Korea rattled off fresh volleys of bombastic rhetoric over the weekend, declaring that it had entered a "state of war" with the South and labeling the U.S. mainland a "boiled pumpkin," vulnerable to attack.

So paint the radome orange and call this whole thing Operation Glass Slipper just to really annoy Un.

The Snow Dog:The Navy ought to put lasers on it that play anti-Nork light shows on the clouds at night. (Maybe some giant speakers that blare Freedom Rock, too.)

If they're looking to provoke the KJ Un, then that might just do it. Sure, the B-2s and F-22s were attention getters, but parking this thing in international waters right off their coast might just get their goat.

This ought to really get some tiny dicks a'wavin'. Good jorb, Washington.

Be pulled from surplus?

Radar based planes are harder to upkeep and are needed elsewhere. This thing was sitting around. It's not really used, and it won't be a big loss to the effectiveness of our forces if it's sunk.

That thing was mothballed and the program ended a while back. I bet it's not even operable. There's a big tennis court and hot dog stand inside that dome instead.

It's a "Gulf of Tonkin" type decoy for the Norks to get all excited and intimidated about.

US Navy: "See, our ball is big. This is just one, the other, and the penis are lurking about."

GORDON:What can a $200m radar ship do that a couple of $20m AWAC planes can't? Besides float.

You know that ship isn't going out without a carrier group for protection, is all I'm saying. The AWACS already come with the carrier group.

You can bring a LOT more power to bear, for one thing.

As an example, the SPY radar on the Aegis ships is an S-band radar in the 5 MW range (IIRC). That radar has a published range of "100+" nautical miles. Exact performance is classified, but back in the 1990s, I saw diagrams that showed how much of the eastern seaboard was covered from the Aegis CSEDS test facility in southern NJ, and you could safely say that it was more than 100 nautical miles in radius.

The SBX-1 radar is X-band, which is higher frequency. That allows finer target resolution. For increased range, I would assume that they're pumping serious megawatts through that antenna, and the machinery required to generate that kind of power is tough to fit in an aircraft.

In case anyone thinks there's a threat that North Korea might pull a 1950-style invasion again, ah, no. Not possible. The ROK armed forces are INFINITELY superior qualitatively, and sufficiently large that the North's superior numbers are meaningless (there's no way the North could supply their standing army in the field, let alone mobilize, feed, supply and transport their supposed 8 million reservists). The North could shoot off some artillery and rockets before the South stomped them into a fine paste, without needing U.S. assistance.

The Nork Air Force mainly flies MiG-21s, designed in the early 1950s, while the South has nearly 200 fully modernized F-16s. 'Nuff said.